The Martha Lake plate. Relief from Copernicus GLO-30; rivers and lakes from USGS NHD; watersheds from the USGS Watershed Boundary Dataset; roads and city limits from Census TIGER 2024.
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26° on Nov. 15, 2014, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1948. Next is 27° in 2000.
Martha Lake’s center stands about 470 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 190 ft to 620 ft, a difference of 430 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Bald Hill, about 730 ft, 10 miles east.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Younger glacial drift (fine-detrital, coarse-detrital), from the Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old.
The section below crosses 5 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 27×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Silt, sand. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Andesite. Age: Middle Eocene to Late Eocene, 34 to 48 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Late Pliocene to Pleistocene, less than 3.6 million years old. About 0.9 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale.
Heights from Copernicus GLO-90 (a surface model: it includes buildings and tree canopy); summits from USGS GNIS; rivers from USGS NHDPlus HR; rock from the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation.
A raindrop that lands in Martha Lake reaches Puget Sound and the Pacific Ocean by way of North Creek and the Sammamish: about 30 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lake Washington.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Martha Lake; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Martha Lake has a warm-summer Mediterranean climate. Summer afternoons average 73° in August; winter nights fall to about 36° in December. About 33 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Martha Lake normally reaches 50° and falls to 40°. The record high is 60°, in 2021; the record low 28°, in 2014. The most rain on this date, 1.51 in, fell in 2015.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1948 at Everett Snohomish County Airport, 5 miles north-northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
